Participation Without Adaptive Preferences

ABSTRACT

Feminism opposes the unjust inequality and subjugation of women. Core feminist projects morally critique people, institutions, social practices, norms, and behaviors that contribute to or constitute the subordination of women. But such projects confront individual women and groups of women who participate in and endorse the practices being critiqued. A common response to this tension is to posit adaptive preferences in the form of “deformed desires” among participating women. But a standing alternative holds that participating women engage in trade‐offs among goods in nonideal situations. Here, I extend this “tradeoffs” alternative by arguing that simple ideas from game‐theoretic models support the possibility of trade‐off explanations that respect and illuminate the agency of participating women while allowing for feminist critique. And trade‐off accounts can avoid substantive assumptions regarding human flourishing or the nature of the good. Both features make trade‐off accounts normatively preferable to adaptive preference accounts of participation in unjust social arrangements.